Case Closed: Tobacco 21 Laws Don't Work

The latest study of Tobacco 21 laws shows they were a resounding....DUD in terms or reducing young adult smoking, vaping, or smokeless tobacco use rates in the USA.  Being published in a famously anti-tobacco journal, Tobacco Control, the authors of course wanted to put a positive spin on it though nonetheless, as shown below (emphasis ours):  

Results Although we did not find evidence that state T21 laws were associated with cigarette, smokeless tobacco or ENDS [i.e. vapes] use overall, the federal T21 law was associated with lower use of all three tobacco products by 0.39–0.92 percentage points. State flavour restrictions were associated with lower use of cigarettes by 0.68 (−1.27 to –0.09) and ENDS by 0.56 (−1.11 to –0.00) percentage points, but not with smokeless tobacco. A three-way interaction revealed that state and federal T21 laws together were associated with a lower prevalence of ENDS use among 18–20 years, but there were no differences in cigarette use from both policies combined versus either alone.

Conclusion State and federal T21 laws are broadly effective at reducing adult tobacco use, while state flavour restrictions specifically lower use of cigarettes and ENDS.

Got that? The state level laws were useless, period, but the federal Tobacco 21 law passed in December 2019 was somehow "broadly effective" because it appeared to trivially reduce tobacco/nicotine product use by not even a full percentage point.  Never mind that that latter was not enforced until well into 2020, enforcement still remained spotty for a while, and that its passage coincided with two major confounds:  1) the EVALI (vaping illness) outbreak that, while clearly due to adulterated black market THC vape products, was fearmongered by the mainstream media to include all vape products, and 2) the COVID-19 pandemic that, for better or worse, seemed to discourage smoking and encourage quitting, since many people feared that smoking made them more vulnerable to the virus.  But no, it HAD to be due to the Tobacco 21 law, because reasons.  Or something. 

Even flavor restrictions were more effective than Tobacco 21 laws!

So how many IQ points did YOU lose from the mental gymnastics of reading all for the above quoted article abstract beyond the stuff in bold?  The study was behind a paywall of course, so we couldn't delve further into it, granted.  But even a cursory reading of the abstract shows that the Tobacco 21 laws are a joke, and not a very funny one at that.  And worse, it may have even driven some young vapers (back) to smoking, which would clearly be a net public health loss.  But try convincing the zealots of that!

These unimpressive findings dovetail nicely with other studies as well.  As for whether raising the tobacco/nicotine age limit from 18 to 21 reduces the use of such products among people under 18, the evidence for that is very weak and mixed at best.

As for the few previous studies that did appear to find statistically and practically significant effects from the Tobacco 21 laws, those apparent results are most likely a result of short-term effects as well as an artifact of confounders like cigarette tax hikes.  

(Cigarette tax hikes, which mean higher prices, are in fact one of the most effective and cost-effective ways to reduce smoking at the population level, though they still have their limits of course.  And while they may be classist, at least they are not ageist, and they don't blatantly violate anyone's civil rights.)

Regardless, even if Tobacco 21 laws were ever proven to be effective, Twenty-One Debunked would still oppose them on principle, as we believe that in a free society worthy of the name, civil rights inherently supersedes "public health".  That is true in regards to tobacco, alcohol, cannabis, or anything else.  

(Mic drop)

UPDATE:  A few older studies have found modest but significant decreases in retail tobacco sales following the raising of the smoking age to 21 in early adopter states like California and Hawaii.  And another study found no change in overall ever or current smoking among California 18-20 year olds, but did find a modest decrease in daily smoking among that age group relative to 21-23 year olds (whose daily smoking actually increased three years later) in the same state.  This of course echoes Miron and Tetelbaum (2009) as well as Asch and Levy (1987 and 1990), Males (1986), and Dee and Evans (2001) in regards to the 21 drinking age.  That is, endogeneity, early-adopter effects, short-term effects, and seesaw/delay effects all appear to be at play here.  The supposed miracle turned out to be a mirage all along, in other words.  Thus, especially in light of the most recent study discussed in this article, there were really no benefits that cannot be alternatively achieved with higher cigarette taxes and/or better enforcement of the previous 18 age limit, and if anything the 21 age limit appears to be counterproductive in the long run.

UPDATE 2:  Even the CDC's very own 2022 study found mixed and ambiguous effects of Tobacco 21 laws, and such effects sometimes even appeared to differ by race as well (in favor of whites, with null or even perverse effects on young people of color).  Oops!

UPDATE 3:  Another recent study found that while self-reported teen smoking and vaping rates declined after Tobacco 21 laws, biomarker exposure showed mixed evidence at best, implying that fewer young smokers are identifying as smokers (and similar findings for vaping).  Thus, the supposed reductions in smoking and vaping in surveys and sales data are at least largely an artifact of underreporting and cross-border shopping rather than real reductions.  Oops!

The Journey-Destination Problem

What we call the "journey-destination problem" is the fact that journeys are often much more dangerous than destinations.  For example, there is the fear that lowering the drinking age to 18 would, even if better overall in the long run, would still have adverse unintended consequences in the short run.  And we at Twenty-One Debunked address that fear head-on in our proposal to lower the drinking age to 18.

First and foremost, lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18 (in line with the rest of the world, and a good chunk of American history) is NOT a radical change at all.  So any (real or imagined) fears related to lowering it even further below 18, or abolishing the age limit altogether, do NOT apply to lowering it to 18.

Secondly, it is NOT like the (real or imagined) fears of suddenly legalizing something that was previously completely illegal for everyone.  Alcohol in its various forms has been broadly legal, tolerated, and openly advertised for most of recorded history.  It is the "devil we already know", basically.   So "same as before, but without the arrests or injustices" is actually pretty close to accurate here.

Thirdly, simple and practical things like raising the alcohol taxes and cracking down harder on drunk driving, drunk violence, drunk and disorderly conduct, and stuff like that, would basically render any feared unintended consequences academic in practice. This is true whether the drinking age is lowered to 18 gradually OR suddenly.

Fourthly, it's not the 1970s or 1980s anymore.  America is almost a completely different country now in so many ways, including for drunk driving.  The original, albeit still fatally flawed, crisis-based justification for coercively raising the drinking age to 21 in the 1980s is itself grossly outdated and basically academic now in the 21st century, hence the need for the pro-21 crowd to invent new, ever more specious and spurious justifications (such as junk neuroscience, and a perversion of the precautionary principle) for keeping it at 21, because reasons.

And finally, it is ultimately a matter of principle, as it is fundamentally a civil rights issue, far more so than it is a public health and safety issue.  Not everything can be reduced to crude utilitarianism, after all.  "Let us do evil, that good may come" is always and everywhere a trap, a lesson that is unfortunately too often learned the hard way.

(Mic drop)

One Of These Countries Is Not Like The Others

 A picture is worth a thousand words.

(Courtesy of Wikipedia)

Which country is the obvious outlier here?  Take a guess.  Oh yeah, the very same one with the legal drinking age of 21, of course: the USA.

Once the envy of the world, up until early to mid-1990s, the USA made enormous progress in traffic safety overall, only to stall out and lag behind relative to the rest of the rich world, and eventually even regress on an absolute basis from 2010 onwards.  Why? Because we failed to see the forest for the trees.  We prioritized drivers over pedestrians, speed and convenience over safety, "bigger is better", and so on.  Larger vehicles, higher speeds, and poor design of both vehicles as well as roads/streets became the norm, going in generally the opposite direction as the rest of the world.  All while piddling over the usual wedge issues of things like age restrictions.

In other words, America's pharisaical culture of fear and safetyism strains out a gnat, while swallowing a camel.  Move along, nothing to see here....

P.S.  To anyone who says that this somehow why the USA "needs" to keep the drinking age 21, well, then, you completely missed the whole point of this article.  And thus you may need your head examined. 

What Should The BAC Limit Be?

It is long past time to revisit the issue of BAC limits for driving once again, specifically for small amounts of alcohol, as it is already obvious for larger amounts.

Twenty-One Debunked believes that, in a perfect world, no one would ever dare to get behind the wheel after having even the slightest amount of alcohol in their system, period.  We would also have safe self-driving cars and state-of-the art public transportation, streets would be designed to maximize safety for all users rather than the convenience of only some users, and so on.  But unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world.  And we never will either.  Think protopian, not utopian.

Thus, we need to be realistic in terms of what sort of BAC limits and penalties we set. Note that the swiftness and certainty of punishment is far more effective than severity.  And we need to prioritize getting actual drunk drivers off the road above all.  Focus on the sharks, not the guppies or dolphins. 

Borrowing from Denmark, one of the heaviest drinking cultures in the world and not even remotely a temperance society, we currently believe that the per se legal limit should be 0.05% in general, and 0.00% if observed to be driving recklessly.

Borrowing from most of Canada, we believe that only a BAC above 0.08% should carry  criminal charges, and 0.05% to 0.08% should be only a traffic violation with a brief administrative license suspension and brief vehicle impoundment and a modest fine.  For novice drivers of any age with less than two consecutive, accident and violation-free years of licensed driving, or under 21, whichever is longer, the BAC limit should be either 0.00% or 0.02%, also a traffic violation less than or equal to that above 0.05%.

If the limit is officially set to 0.00% for effect, any test result below the limit of quantitative (LOQ) must be treated as a presumptive zero (by that, I mean a conclusive presumption).  If it is a handheld breathalyzer device, or if the LOQ is unknown for the instrument, any result below 0.02% shall be a presumptive zero.  And all failing breathalyzer results should be confirmed on a second device.

Penalties should be graduated.  For those with above 0.08% but below 0.15%, a first offense should be a misdemeanor, in addition to any administrative license revocation.  There can also be an option to proceed only administratively and thus summarily.  Repeat offenses above 0.08%, or any offenses above 0.15% (or "aggravated DUI"), and/or with any kids under 16 in the car and/or when a serious accident occurs, should be automatic felonies with stiff sentences and heavy fines that can only be downgraded upon successful completion of an alcohol treatment program, that is, the classic "felony hammer".  And license revocations after the second offense above 0.08% need to be (more or less) permanent.  No more people still driving after their second, third, fourth, or fifth (!) DUI, ever again.

And those who drunkenly kill or maim innocent people, well, they need to go away for a very, very long time.  No excuses.  Do the crime, do the time.

And enforcement of these BAC limits should be done not only with checkpoints, but also with roving patrols as well, including the back roads especially.  And also use the "fish in a barrel method" in the parking lots of bars and clubs too.  We need to get these ticking time bombs off the road, yesterday.

So what are we waiting for?

An Easy Way To Quash The Black Market, Solve The Potency Problem, Protect Small Businesses, AND "Bring Back Mids" Too

Here's an idea.  In addition to moving from half-assed quasi-legalization to full legalization of cannabis, how about introducing a new type of retail license:  the "half-license"?  It would be similar to alcohol licenses that only allow the sale of beer and/or wine but not hard liquor, and would only allow the sale of weed or hash with a potency less than, say 10%, and perhaps low-potency cannabis edibles and beverages too.  Meanwhile, only those with full licenses would be able to sell the stronger stuff.  And allow any place that sells beer and/or wine to sell the lower-potency cannabis as well, and allow at least some dedicated liquor stores to sell all types of cannabis products. 

Not only would low-potency, "extraction grade" or "trim" weed (like what was normal in the 1990s and earlier) be incentivized to sell as-is rather than extracting it and turning it into concentrates, as now there would finally be a market for the new (old) stuff, but that would also undercut the black market without interfering with legitimate dispensaries that would carry on as now.  And since nostalgia is back in vogue these days, why not take advantage of that?

So many problems could be solved at once.  But that would make too much sense, right?

Cannabis Legalization STILL Not A Disaster, In Canada Or The USA

Yet another study debunks the prohibitionists once again.  When Canada legalized cannabis for recreational use in 2018 (for flower, followed by concentrates and edibles in 2020), there was no increase in cannabis-related hospitalizations for either 18-24 year olds or those 25+ following legalization.  Keep in mind that in Canada, the federal age limit for cannabis is 18, and the provinces set it at 18 in Alberta and Quebec (the latter has since raised it to 21, alas), and 19 elsewhere, largely matching the legal drinking and tobacco smoking ages in most provinces.  The study, interestingly enough, looked at data specifically from Alberta, which was the only province that kept it at 18 consistently since legalization, and thus the most permissive one.

This dovetails nicely with other studies in both Canada and the USA, in which the dire predictions of the doomsayers notably failed to materialize.

UPDATE:  And before anyone mentions "Tokelahoma", we should note that both violent and property crime in Oklahoma have actually been trending downward, not upward, since their "Wild West" of free market "medical" cannabis legalization in 2018.  Crime in the state is slightly above the national average, but that was true even long before such legalization too.  And a few odd high-profile incidents do NOT a trend make or break.  As we have noted repeatedly before, the correlation between cannabis legalization and real crime is, for all practical purposes, essentially null.  In fact, there is some evidence of a decrease in crime.

And another study finds no increase, and in fact a decrease, of young adults driving under the influence of either cannabis OR alcohol following legalization. 

And while it is debatable whether cannabis legalization actually reduces the use of alcohol or tobacco, data from state tax receipts at the very least shows no increase in the consumption of either of the latter two substances following legalization.

UPDATE:  Another study finds an inverse relationship between recreational cannabis legalization and intimate partner violence, the opposite of what researchers predicted.  That is, legalization appeared to reduce it, contrary to "Reefer Madness" stereotypes.

Have A Safe And Happy Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day, often known as the unofficial first day of summer and National BBQ Day.  But let's remember what it really is--a day to honor all of the men and women of our armed forces who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country, past and present.  And that of course includes all of those who died serving our country before they were legally old enough to drink.  Let us all take a moment of silence to honor them.

As for Candy Lightner, the ageist turncoat founder of MADD who had the chutzpah and hubris to go on national TV in 2008 and publicly insult our troops, may her name and memory be forever blotted out. 

And as always, arrive alive, don't drink and drive.  It's just not worth it, period.  And it's very simple to prevent.  If you plan to drive, don't drink, and if you plan to drink, don't drive.  It's not rocket science.   Designate a sober driver, call a cab or rideshare, crash on the couch, or even walk if you have to.  Or don't drink--nobody's got a gun to your head.

(Mic drop)

Disturbing Behaviour (Satire)

The 1998 horror sci-fi film Disturbing Behavior was a classic in the youth rights-adjacent genre.  It takes place, of course, in the USA (Washington State).  But what if it took place in the nearby Canadian province of Alberta, who is light-years ahead of the USA (a pitifully low bar to clear, we know) in terms of youth rights?  How would Disturbing Behaviour (note the spelling) go in that context?

Student 1:  "Oh, so a bunch of wannabe technocrats are trying to do some sort of weird mind control thought reform brainwashing crap on us.  How cute." 

Student 2:  "It's not gonna work on us, though.  They picked the wrong town to mess with, and probably the wrong province too." (Laughs)

Technocrat:  "Foiled again!" (Packs up and moves far away)

The End

(Credits roll, to the same song as the original, "Got You (Where I Want You)" by The Flys)

Still More Things Underage Drinkers Didn't Do

In the past, we would chronicle and discuss countless examples of drinkers OVER 21 behaving badly, as "Things Underage Drinkers Didn't Do".  Time to do it again:

In the past few months or so in America:

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly crash her car into a birthday party, killing two children. 

An underage drinker did NOT punch a flight attendant multiple times after drinking rum, causing the flight to divert, and then have the chutzpah to spit on and groin-kick the police officers who escorted him off the flight.

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly BITE a flight attendant on an international flight, forcing the flight to divert.

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly drive 105 mph with a BAC of 0.23 and crash into and kill another driver.

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly drive in the wrong direction on I-95 and kill a young nursing student. 

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly steal a car and then crash it into two police cars.

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly run over an elderly woman with a snowplow in a parking lot, killing her.

An underage drinker did NOT drunkenly bite the finger off of a wedding guest who tried to restrain him after he inappropriately touched another guest.

An underage drinker did NOT have the chutzpah to get herself arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct at an AA meeting of all places.  Not to be outdone in chutzpah, she kicked the police officers and added insult to injury by puking in the patrol car.

An underage drinker did NOT pull a gun on another parent at a youth football game because of something they said, then argued with police and threatened to kill the K9 too.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is just the tip of the iceberg...

UPDATE:  Also, an underage drinker did NOT drink so much that she drunkenly smashed her car into a crowd of 16 pedestrians crossing the street, injuring 14 and killing two of them, then left the scene of the crash until she was caught, all while pregnant. 

An underage drinker did NOT get so wasted that she grabbed an unrelated 10 year old boy in a Jersey Shore motel swimming pool and swung him around and dunked him underwater, then jumped on and inappropriately grabbed his father when he tried to intervene, and then became belligerent with police and proceeded to BITE one officer's hand as well.

Cannabis Legalization Still Not A Disaster After All

The latest evidence finds that cannabis legalization was NOT a disaster after all, and that essentially NONE of the prohibitionists' histrionic fears had come to pass.  Yes, really.  That's the good news.

The bad news?  Legalization has been half-assed thus far, and we need to finish the job. Yesterday.  First of all, we need to fully legalize it at the federal level and get it out of the ridiculous legal limbo it has been in for years.  Secondly, we need to treat it no more stringently than alcohol or tobacco, not tax it excessively, and make retail licenses cheaper and easier to get, to reduce barriers to entry.  And finally, we need to reduce the age limit to 18.  Do all of these things, and the black market will wither on the vine.

So what are we waiting for?